Youth, Africa - "Africa’s exploding youth population represents both a challenge and an opportunity for the continent. Strong economic growth has not translated in the amount of good quality jobs needed to absorb the 11-12 million young Africans entering the labor market every day. Recent events in North Africa have highlighted the negative effects on society and security that unemployment and underemployment, particularly among the youth can have. - The continent’s youth population boom also holds the kind of potential demographic dividend that benefitted East Asian economies – triggering economic growth. But this will only happen if African countries can provide quality jobs, equity and inclusiveness in economic growth for their expanding populations."

Type “Latin America” and “booming middle classes” into Google and you will get more than 40,000 results. The rise of millions of Latin Americans out of poverty over the past decade has defined the region socially, politically and economically.

Solutions to some of our intractable global challenges could be found in 2.5 billion empowered, young and urban shoppers. These are the “aspirationals”, and the way they are uniting style and social status with sustainability values represents both an opportunity for business and a lever for change. Aspirational consumers love shopping, but they also want […]

Mozambique’s offshore fields hold a combined 150 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of gas, estimated to be enough to meet world consumption for more than two years. Negotiations between international consortia and the government to build a USD 40 billion LNG plant are dragging on with several players competing for the contract. The main consortium leaders, the US company, Anadarko, and Italian company, Eni, have reduced their investments in the project, selling stakes to new partners primarily from power hungry emergent economies. This has a two-fold outcome of diversifying funding sources for the LNG projects, while also potentially securing new markets for the final product. New entrants from India (ONGC Videsh) and China (CNPC) joined India’s Bharat Petroleum Corporation, Japan’s Mitsui & Co, Thailand’s PTT Exploration and Production, and Galp Energia from Portugal. With an international partner yet to be selected, LNG production along with the sizeable contribution it will make to public finances is unlikely to start before 2020.
Via Investors Europe Stock Brokers

Location based content marketing may just be the next big marketing trend. Get the facts on this trend and decide whether or not it's right for your brand. (Is Location Based Content Marketing the Next Big Thing?

The outbreak of Ebola virus disease (EVD) that started in December 2013 has defied several months of mitigation and containment efforts. In July 2014 it was still evolving in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. As of 20 August, the toll in those countries had reached 844 EVD confirmed deaths 1. On 20 July, the outbreak reached Nigeria through an infected traveler coming from Liberia. The Nigerian official reports list 12 probable cases, and it is not clear if the outbreak has been contained.

EVD is caused by infection with a virus of the family Filoviridae, genus Ebolavirus 2. EVD transmission during the incubation period is very unlikely and occurs via direct contact with blood, secretions, and/or other bodily fluids of dead or living infected persons. Gene sequencing of the virus causing the 2014 West African (2014WA) outbreak has demonstrated 98% homology with the Zaire Ebola virus, with a 55% case fatality ratio (CFR) across the affected countries 3. Unfortunately there are no licensed treatments available for EVD, and severely ill patients can only be cared for with intensive supportive care.

The 2014WA outbreak is the largest ever observed, both by number of cases and geographical extension. For this reason, on 6-7 August, an Emergency Committee of the WHO 4 advised the 2014WA outbreak constitutes an ’extraordinary event’ and a public health risk to other States. Indeed, although the outbreak started in an isolated region of Guinea, transmission has occurred in large cities (Conakry, Freetown, Monrovia and Lagos) of the four affected countries. These urban areas have major international airports, thus raising concern about a quick internationalization of the outbreak (see Fig. 1). While importation of cases should not generate large outbreaks in countries where prompt isolation of cases in appropriate health care facilities occurs, it is clear that a quantitative analysis of the risk of importation of cases (likelihood, timeline, number of cases) in countries not affected at the moment by the outbreak may provide valuable intelligence on the evolution of the 2014WA outbreak.

So far most of the analyses on the risk of international spread of the outbreak have focused on the analysis of the sheer volume of international passenger traffic across countries 5,6. These analyses however do not consider the local evolution of the outbreak in the affected countries and the specific etiology of the disease (incubation time scale, etc.). Here we provide a quantitative assessment of the international spread based on large-scale computer microsimulations of the 2014WA outbreak that generate stochastic simulations of epidemic spread worldwide, yielding, among other measures, the case importation events at a daily resolution for 3,362 subpopulations in 220 countries. We use the Global Epidemic and Mobility Model that integrates high-resolution data on human demography and mobility on a worldwide scale in a metapopulation stochastic epidemic model 7,8,9. The disease dynamics within each population consider explicitly that EVD transmissions occur in the general community, in hospital settings, and during funeral rites 10. For parameter inference, we use a Monte Carlo likelihood analysis that considers more than 1,000,000 simulations that sample the disease model space and the data on the 2014WA outbreak up to 9 August 2014. This approach selects the disease dynamic model that we use to generate numerical stochastic simulations of an epidemic’s local (within West African countries) and global progression.

We evaluate the progression of the epidemic in West Africa and its international spread under the assumption that the EVD outbreak continues to evolve at the current pace. The numerical simulation results show a steep increase of cases in the West Africa region, unless the transmissibility of the EVD is successfully mitigated. The overall basic reproductive number of the epidemic in the region is estimated to be in the range 1.5 − 2.0. We find that, although surveillance and containment measures have been in place for several months, the transmissibility in hospital and funeral rites are likely an appreciable component of the overall transmissibility. The probability of case exportation is extremely modest (upper bound less than 5%) for non-African countries, with the exception of the United Kingdom (UK), Belgium, France and the United States (US). As of the beginning of September, the countries with the largest probability of seeing the arrival of EVD cases are Ghana, UK and Gambia. The overall probability of international spread will increase if the Nigerian outbreak is not promptly controlled. We also show that as of the end of September, the size distribution of outbreaks due to the international spread of the EVD is contained (median value <4 cases) for countries outside of the African region. Severe travel restrictions to and from the affected areas (80% airline traffic reduction) generates only a 3-4 weeks delay in the international spreading.

The lack of detailed data on the 2014WA EVD outbreak makes any modeling approach vulnerable to the many assumptions and uncertainty about basic parameters and the quality of data. However, we hope that the characterization of the EVD 2014WA outbreak and the associated risk of international spread provided here may be useful to national and international agencies in allocating resources for interventions to contain and to mitigate the epidemic.

The number of middle class households in 11 key sub-Saharan African countries – excluding South Africa – are set to triple to 22m by 2030, creating a burgeoning consumer market for items such as vehicles, insurance policies, property and health products, according to a Standard Bank research report. Simon Freemantle, senior political economist at Standard Bank and author of the report, said the prospective boom in middle class households – those earning between US$8,500 and US$42,000 a year – is also likely to be complemented by a swelling in the number of lower middle class households that earn between US$5,500 and US$8,500 annually.

We’ve all seen it happen before – bad meeting etiquette. What many people don’t realize is that how they act during meeting can help (or hurt) their career. Check out these Do’s and Don’ts to earn more respect at work…

Sharing your scoops to your social media accounts is a must to distribute your curated content. Not only will it drive traffic and leads through your content, but it will help show your expertise with your followers.

Integrating your curated content to your website or blog will allow you to increase your website visitors’ engagement, boost SEO and acquire new visitors. By redirecting your social media traffic to your website, Scoop.it will also help you generate more qualified traffic and leads from your curation work.

Distributing your curated content through a newsletter is a great way to nurture and engage your email subscribers will developing your traffic and visibility.
Creating engaging newsletters with your curated content is really easy.